In a lot of people’s estimation, Nintendo “won” this year’s E3, which is impressive considering the company entered the show with all the forward momentum of a drunken buzzy beetle. Despite trailing in the console race, Nintendo dominated social media, and you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn’t think better of Nintendo of and its products after E3 than they did before. That’s a win any way you cut it.

A lot of Nintendo’s success this year stems from them breaking from E3 tradition, or at least what’s become E3 tradition over the past few years. I very strongly suspect we’re going to see Sony and Microsoft lifting a page from Nintendo next year — I mean, if Nintendo can steal the show with the wounded Wii U, imagine what Sony could do with the same tactics. Here’s 5 ways Nintendo may have changed E3 for the better this year…

The Death Of The E3 Press Conference

E3 press conferences suck. In the long history of E3, how many good ones have there been? Uh, the one where Reggie debuted? The Konami one from 2010 (for purely unintentional reasons)? I spend a decent chunk of almost every day obsessively keeping up with video game news — 90-minutes of new game trailers and hardware announcements should make my skull literally explode with endorphins, but instead I’m usually checking my watch.

Fans questioned Nintendo’s decision to do a pre-recorded video in lieu of a press conference last year, but this year they significantly upped the polish and production values and delivered something that wasn’t just a dry vehicle for new trailers and game announcements, but actually entertaining in its own right. The traditional E3 press conference needs to be taken out behind the barn, and I would be truly surprised if either Microsoft or Sony (or both) don’t jump on the pre-recorded bandwagon next year.

Nintendo

If you only watched Nintendo’s Digital Event, you missed some interesting stuff.

They Held Something Back for the Show Itself

The press conferences aren’t, technically speaking, even part of E3. They’re just pre-show wank sessions. The part where journalists go around and actually play the games, that’s the actual E3. For some time though, you’d be right if you called the actual E3 tradeshow the boring part of E3 week. The press conferences are home to all the big announcements and coolest footage — nothing actually happens at E3 itself.

Nintendo changed that this year. They held off announcement of games like Devil’s Third and Code Name: STEAM for E3 itself, and their demos imparted some genuine information and gave a better idea of how their games played. For the first time in a while, something other than the press conferences actually mattered.

Join The Discussion

Agreed. Sony, Microsoft, you take Nintendo’s ideas all the time, let this be another.
This year didn’t sell make want to run and buy current-gen console immediately (I’m building a pc in the near future), but it convinced me to buy a Wii U eventually once the exclusives pile up.

Well, they sold me on the Wii U, I’m going to buy one this year, I’m just waiting for a good deal to come along. Of course I’m just one guy, I don’t know how many other people they sold on their machine.

Also, for all the talk of Nintendo not putting out new IPs, which was largely untrue even before E3 2014, they showed off Splatoon! which managed to get me, a guy who mixes with multiplayer shooters like oil and water, excited about it.

I bought mine in January and my friends/co-workers did the same thing! Its refreshing being back on a Nintendo platform after abandoning N64 for Xbox, 360, PS3. The endless list a post-apocalyptic first person shooters was getting old, quick.

While I agree Nintendo was the most entertaining at E3, and have always been happy with my Wii U since a month after launch and am very pleased to see so many others finally excited about it, Sony already did the “funny sketches from the Robot Chicken guys using their characters” bit last year, I think around the PS4 launch. I was very pleased to see Nintendo continue the trend though, and their general trend of just having fun with stuff, poking fun at themselves even (see the Mother 3 joke)

I haven’t heard anyone talk about the skits they had in there. Those may have been my favorite parts, just for the sheer novelty. Though the games were also pretty awesome, of course. Anyway, yeah, I’d definitely like to see everyone else go with this approach as well. Even Aisha Tyler can’t compete with this kind of presentation.